 Academic in-group bias: An empirical examination of the link between author and journal affiliationYaniv Reingewertz and Carmela Lutmar Journal of Informetrics, 2018, vol. 12, issue 1, 74-86 Abstract: Do academic journals favor authors who share their institutional affiliation? To answer this question we examine citation counts, as a proxy for paper quality, for articles published in four leading international relations journals during the years 2000–2015. We compare citation counts for articles written by “in-group members” (authors affiliated with the journal’s publishing institution) versus “out-group members” (authors not affiliated with that institution). Articles written by in-group authors received 18% to 49% fewer Web of Science citations when published in their home journal (International Security or World Politics) vs. an unaffiliated journal, compared to out-group authors. These results are mainly driven by authors who received their PhDs from Harvard or MIT. The findings show evidence of a bias within some journals towards publishing papers by faculty from their home institution, at the expense of paper quality. Keywords: In-group bias; Citation counts; Author affiliation; Journal affiliation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:infome:v:12:y:2018:i:1:p:74-86 DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2017.11.006 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Informetrics is currently edited by Leo Egghe More articles in Journal of Informetrics from Elsevier |
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